On Monday afternoon, the Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs will hear testimony on a bill that is such a bad idea it must not pass beyond the public hearing stage.

The bill, sponsored solely by Rep. Tyler Clark, R-Easton, would prohibit students with poor academic records from getting driver’s licenses until they are 18 years old.

So, bad students are bad drivers? And good students are good drivers?

We don’t think so.

There are plenty of good students who are reckless on our roads and plenty of bad students who are disciplined drivers.

The insurance industry has long offered the carrot of reduced premiums for honor roll students, which gives students (parents, really) an opportunity to save a few dollars on the family’s insurance policy. That’s good and it works really well for some families.

But Clark’s bill would prohibit poorly performing students, many of whom need to drive to jobs to help support themselves or their families, from getting behind the wheel at all. Then, there are towns – like Auburn – where there is no bus transportation to school, so dozens of bad students might not be able to get themselves to school.

While it’s true that a driver’s license is a privilege and not a right, this bill offers greater privileges to students who get good grades because they are smarter, work harder or are privileged enough to be tutored to succeed. Just because a teenager can’t pass calculus doesn’t mean they are a menace on the street.

Not only does the bill make the inexplicably direct tie between academic performance and driving habits, it would require every student who wants to apply for a license to produce a letter from their high school superintendent, principal or other official attesting to their academic achievement, and produce it within five days of a student application.

And, the bill outlines punishment for a student who provides a fraudulent academic letter when seeking a driver’s license, banning that teen from getting a license for a year.

That’s a mountain of paperwork at schools to produce thousands of letters on the quick and a tremendous burden on the Secretary of State’s Office to track teenage fraud.

LD 1045 is a bad idea.

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In February, Robert Vitale and William Kessler used an old key to break into a condominium Kessler used to own in Rangeley. The men took a couple of wine glasses from the kitchen and left after the woman renting the condominium saw them there.

The men were both charged with burglary and theft by unlawful taking, which seems appropriate. After all, they broke into a place they weren’t renting and took items that didn’t belong to them. Those charges were later reduced to criminal trespass.

Here’s the twist: all charges against these men were dismissed in exchange for each of them making a $1,000 donation to a charity of choice of the Pennsylvania couple who was lawfully renting that condominium.

“The defendants realized they made a horrible mistake,” according to Assistant District Attorney Andrew Robinson, and made financial “amends” for their shared lack of judgment.

A cynic might suggest they bought their way out of trouble.

Here’s the more interesting twist: Vitale is a 48-year-old deputy warden at a minimum security prison in Rhode Island.

So, Vitale cannot – in any forum – argue that his crime was a mere “mistake” because he knows better. And, his buddy Kessler cannot – in any forum — claim that he thought he had any right to be in property he didn’t own.

These men committed a crime and paid $2,000 to avoid criminal convictions.

Is this the new standard for all such cases, or just for this particular prison official and his Massachusetts pal?

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